For a moment, time seemed to hold its breath; then it seemed to flip into reverse. The exploding particles fell back into the twins, slipped back into place like a cracked vase being fitted back together. H and Em, still firing their weapons, looked on in disbelief as the twins reformed and repaired themselves before their eyes. The twins, now obviously in contempt of the agents’ weapons, shredded the remainder of their shield and strode again toward their target, Vungus’s car.
H kept firing, but now he knew each hit was nothing more than a distraction to the twins.
“Driver’s side bumper!” he shouted to Em.
Em dashed over and tugged and pulled to no avail on the left rear bumper. She tugged with all her might and fell onto her backside. H glanced over long enough to see.
“The English driver’s side!” he said.
Em grabbed the Jag’s right rear bumper and twisted. A compartment broke open around the bumper, and Em withdrew a large, chrome MiB rifle. H smacked the car’s rear panel as he tossed aside the ineffective snub-nosed pistol. The panel slid away to reveal a big MiB auto-blaster. H knelt by the rear tire. With a click and a twist of the hubcap, he withdrew a circular drum magazine. He slapped it onto the auto-blaster.
Both agents stood, side by side, and opened fire again on the twins. The blasts from the larger weapons tore into the aliens, pinning them down and ripping their bodies apart almost faster than they could reform them. The twins began trading particles between themselves, reforming arms, legs, and heads as they were blasted apart again and again.
One of the twins, looking angry now, knelt and touched the cracked and crumbling pavement. A seething, molten blade the size of a large tree erupted from the ground. He gestured, and the blade snapped free and flew toward his brother, who caught it and hurled it straight at the agents. Em and H dived for cover, but H’s beleaguered Jag was nearly sliced in two by the red-hot blade. The twins didn’t let up. They telekinetically launched an endless barrage of pieces of destroyed cars, hunks of concrete, and any other street debris they could assault H and Em with. The agents hunkered down behind the crumpled remains of the Jag.
In the maelstrom, Em spotted Vungus struggling from his overturned car. He looked even sicker than he had when they had deposited him in the back seat. He saw Em and reached out to her across the chaotic battlefield, “Em… Em…”
“Go on,” H shouted, firing the big auto-blaster, “I’ll cover you!”
Em dashed across the fractured landscape that only a few minutes ago been a quiet London street. She stumbled a few times, but somehow kept her feet. The hail of debris was all around her, but H was laying down withering blaster fire that was keeping the twins too busy to target her directly. She reached Vungus’s side, firing a few shots from her own weapon and knocking one of the twins off his feet.
Vungus hacked up a glob of dark ooze that stained his lips. His color was all wrong, or at least she thought it was, for a healthy Jababian. Em had no idea what she was supposed to do now. “H,” she called, “a little help here?”
Vungus groaned and shook his head. “No! Not H.” Each breath he took seemed to hurt him. “He’s… changed. I could feel it.”
Em glanced over to H, who was blasting away at the twins, his eyes bright with excitement, not fear, as deadly debris hurled past him. H looked at Em in response to her call, blinking as if he were coming out of a trance.
H shouted something at her over the scream of blaster fire and the fury of the telekinetic storm the twins had summoned, but Em couldn’t hear what he was trying to tell her.
Vungus slid a tentacle around Em’s forearm. It began to sparkle as it had done when he had touched H. “I have to know… if I can trust you,” he wheezed.
Em stared at the tentacle on her arm, almost holding her breath. He was reading her. She couldn’t quite believe it.
“You… don’t trust anybody…” Vungus seemed sad at the revelation. “You never have.” Em felt like the hurricane of concrete and brick had fallen on her. The realization stung, but she also knew it was true. Since that night so long ago, when the world became a lie that everyone seemed to be telling, she hadn’t trusted anyone. She still didn’t.
Vungus’s tentacle tightened on her forearm as he gasped in pain. “Don’t!” he hissed. “Something’s wrong in Men in Black.”
With one of his hands, Vungus placed a small, rectangular box in Em’s palm. Em grasped it. It looked like an alien version of an old Japanese puzzle box, covered in complex geometric patterns on its tiled surfaces. Vungus pulled himself closer to her ear. “Hide this.” He struggled with each word.
“Vungus, what is this?” Em asked.
“Trust no one, Agent Em.” Vungus whispered. He made a few horrible grunting sounds, as he fought and lost his battle for another breath. Vungus lay dead on the ground. In shock, Em looked again at the box in her hand, and then felt the presence of other eyes on her. The twins were watching her—or, more accurately, they had locked on to the box. It was what they had come to Earth for.
They moved as one toward Em. She suddenly realized that H’s suppressing fire had stopped. She fumbled for her own pistol, the one she had set down when she had been ministering to Vungus. She brought the gun up, knowing already that its firepower wouldn’t be strong enough to stop the twins, to protect the box.
Standing by the trunk of the Jag, H now wielded a chrome, high-tech rocket launcher resting on one of his shoulders. H, from behind the targeting reticle, smiled at the twins as he fired the rocket. The explosion rocked the entire block. The force of the blast sent the twins flying halfway down the street. And suddenly there was a screech of tires and the roar of engines, and a swarm of MiB Lexus saloons came barreling around the corner and encircled them. Heavily armed agents jumped out of the vehicles. The twins exchanged a glance, speaking without words.
One twin stepped into the other, leaving a single figure. The lone figure glowed and scattered into a stream of tiny, staticky particles that disappeared into the air.
H dropped the launcher and rushed to Vungus’s side. Em saw something cross H’s face that she hadn’t seen since meeting the cocky, charming agent—shock, grief, and sadness. H knelt beside her and gently closed his friend’s eyes.
Em slipped the puzzle box Vungus had given her in her jacket pocket surreptitiously, remembering the dead alien’s final words as she did.
14
If one word described Agent Cee’s existence, it would be order. Cee awoke the same time every day; ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner the same time daily. He had the same thing for tea every day without fail. So when Cee’s communicator buzzed several hours after his appointed bedtime, Cee’s eyes popped wide open, and he snarled as he reached for the phone, already knowing the author of this disruption: H.
To Cee’s mind, Agent H was a force of chaos. He should have been neuralyzed a long time ago and dumped back into that grubby little seaside town High T had found him in. It wasn’t that H was an incompetent agent in the field; in fact, he seemed to thrive under pressure and in the presence of real danger. No, H’s problem was he didn’t think the rules applied to him, and in Cee’s book, the rules applied to everyone, even heroes who had saved the world with only their wits and their Series-7 De-Atomizers. But H had a powerful ally in his former partner, High T. High T had personally selected Cee for MiB service as well, and Cee had enormous respect for his boss. High T’s only flaw, in Cee’s estimation, was his friendship with H. As long as High T put up with H’s nonsense, there was little Cee could do about him, other than file the proper complaint forms and wait for the big goon to bollocks it up enough that even High T would see he was a liability to the service.
Exactly twenty minutes after receiving the phone call, Cee was at the crime scene, just as he had said he would be. MiB agents, in coveralls that announced they were with Southern Electric, were placing long, slender, metallic posts along the perimeter of the block. The street looked completely normal and quiet except for the “uti
lity workers” and their trucks.
Cee parked his Lexus and strode across the street, ignoring the greetings of the agents. He walked between two of the poles, and reality shimmered and rippled. Cee now stood in the middle of utter chaos and destruction. The street had massive chunks torn out of it. In other places, the asphalt was frozen in rising waves and bizarre spirals. Cars along the street were crumpled and scored with energy weapons fire. Others were melted, overturned, or crushed. MiB agents were everywhere, scanning the debris with spectral analyzers. Cee looked up. An expensive car was partly embedded, upside down, in a brick building. Cee touched his temples, the freight train of an H-level headache already slamming into his brain.
His righteous anger overcame the throb in his temples, and he scanned the scene for the source of his pain. Instead, he found the probationer, the American, Agent M. Cee strode up to her as she was circling one of the frozen splashes of asphalt, examining it in wonder. “Report,” Cee snapped. Em was still in awe of what she was looking at, now that she had caught her breath.
“Remarkable,” Em said to Cee, shaking her head. “They did this with their bare hands—turned solid to liquid and then back again. In thermodynamic systems, it’s called ‘phase transition.’”
Cee gave the crest a cursory inspection and then withdrew a fresh pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and put them on. He never left home without a good supply of latex gloves. He ran a gloved finger over the impromptu street sculpture. H had joined them, he noticed.
“Interesting.” Cee was still examining the anomaly. He addressed H without looking at him or Em. “And what is she doing here?”
“‘She’ is walking you through the crime scene,” Em said.
“Probationary agents aren’t rated for field work—” Cee snapped off his rubber gloves and folded them precisely “—so she is not here at all.”
“Well, clearly,” H began, “she is here. I can see her.” He poked Em, and she slapped his hand away. “I can touch her—”
“Yeah, she feels that,” Em interrupted, “and she can speak for herself, thanks.”
Cee turned to face H, having returned his perfectly folded gloves to his coat pocket. “You had one job. To show some reptilian sleazeball a good time.”
“He wasn’t a ‘reptilian sleazeball,’” H said, his jaw tight. “He was my friend.”
“Who’s now dead,” Cee didn’t bother to hide his smugness, “because of you.”
“You need to watch what you’re saying.” H took a step toward Cee.
“Or what? We won’t be friends?” Cee sneered. “Because being your ‘buddy’ didn’t turn out so well for that guy.” He nodded in the direction of Vungus’s sheet-covered body.
H grabbed the smaller agent by the lapels and smashed him against the car.
Cee leaned in, closer to H’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I touch a nerve?” H reared back to punch Cee, but stopped himself. He let the senior agent go and turned away. Cee smoothed his jacket and looked to Em. “You were the last one with him. Did he say anything that would explain why he was killed? Anything at all?”
Em’s hand dropped into her pocket where the hidden puzzle box resided. She recalled Vungus’s final words and removed her hand, empty. She shook her head. “No, nothing.”
Cee’s scowl slipped away, and he found he was smiling.
“So, a high-ranking member of the Jababian royal family dies on your watch, murdered by assailants you can’t identify, for reasons you can’t begin to fathom.” He turned to H, and the gruesome smile broadened. “Even the old man can’t get you out of this one.”
15
Em had never been to High T’s office before, but it reflected what she knew of the London station chief: it was tasteful, elegant, and understated. While it shared the seventies futurist look of O’s office in New York, High T had included touches like antiques in the corners and numerous oil paintings. High T was on the phone with the Jababian ambassador, explaining Vungus’s fate. High T had a pained expression on his face, but his voice remained strong and serene.
“Understood,” High T said, nodding.
Em examined the paintings more closely. She had thought they were classical at first, but they were actually scenes of moments in the history of the Men in Black. Em paused at a painting of a young MiB agent and an older agent battling a terrifying, gigantic bug on the grounds of the 1962 New York World’s Fair. But another painting drew her attention: a heroically styled depiction of High T and H battling the Hive monster on the Eiffel Tower. Underneath, a small plate under the painting read: “…armed with only their wits and their Series-7 De-Atomizers…”
Em looked from the square-jawed, clear-eyed hero in the painting to the rumpled, hung-over reality of H sitting in the chair in front of High T’s desk.
H was smiling as he watched his friend, former partner, and boss twist on the phone call. Em could hear the snarling, spitting language of the ambassador through the earpiece from several feet away. H gave High T a thumbs-up. The senior agent’s frown deepened, and he spun his chair toward the window overlooking the MiB headquarters floor, away from H.
“I assure you, we will deal with this in the strongest possible terms,” High T said.
That didn’t sound good. Em caught H’s eye, not trying to hide her concern. H waved a hand dismissively. He stood and walked over to Em, who still stood in front of the painting of H and High T.
“We’ll be fine,” H confided in a low voice. “He has to do the dance for the sake of diplomatic relations, but he’ll probably just send them a fruit basket, and it will all blow over.”
High T spun his chair around and hung up the phone. He did not look happy. “The Jababians want your heads… quite literally. Two heads sent by diplomatic pouch.”
Em stayed calm, but her legs felt a little wobbly under her. He was serious. “What did you tell them?”
“He told them MiB aren’t barbarians.” H’s usual swagger was back in full force. “We’re not in the business of brutally sacrificing our own agents, right?” High T said nothing; he was seething. The look on High T’s face finally began to sink in for H. “Right?” he asked again, not quite so confidently.
High T looked past H as Cee entered the office. Cee gave Em and H a dismissive glance and handed an MiB tablet to High T. “The forensics report you ordered.” The tablet’s screen announced it was “Eyes only, High T.” High T held the tablet up to eye level, and the screen confirmed his unique retinal pattern and opened Cee’s report. High T scanned it quickly, shaking his head several times.
“Well, this is troubling,” he said, “very troubling.” He lowered the tablet and made a grab-and-pull gesture in front of the screen. He followed it with a toss gesture to the holographic data column. Three-dimensional images of the twins appeared in the room, as well as coiled representations of spiraled DNA, with specific markers flashing red. “These are our suspects. A species called ‘Dyadnum.’ From a binary star system in the constellation Draco.”
High T and H traded looks. H stepped forward and tapped a portion of the report hologram. A star chart appeared, filling a large section of the room. “Draco,” H said, adjusting the focus of the map to zoom in on a twin star system in a distant constellation, “that’s Hive territory. The entire sector fell years ago.” The star map was covered in red dots representing territory held by the Hive.
“And as we all know, the Hive doesn’t just destroy their enemies,” High T said, grimly. “They subsume them, take them over from within.” High T diminished the star map and enlarged the alien DNA sequences. Green indicator tags showed where the twins’ DNA was squirming, shifting. “The Dyads’ DNA. Riddled with Hive mutations.”
“Meaning, whoever these two were,” H said, “they’re part of the Hive, now.”
Em recalled the VR files on the Hive, and she had a sudden and terrible image flash through her mind: all of New York, all of London, all of the planet, consumed and enslaved by the relentless Hive. She p
ushed the thought out of her mind and tried to focus on the briefing.
“Yes,” High T agreed, “but why would the Hive send them all this way to kill a Jababian royal?” He turned to H. “You knew Vungus better than anyone. Did he indicate why he was here? Did he want something from us?”
Em almost spoke up to tell High T about the puzzle box, but then Vungus’s warning came back to her. Something is wrong in MiB… Trust no one, Agent Em. She stayed quiet.
“Something was wrong.” H looked thoughtful. “He wanted to tell me, but he was distracted.”
“He was distracted?” Cee muttered. “Or were you?” Cee stepped between the other two men. “Sir, if I may, this whole thing is a debacle, a farrago. A failure of this magnitude demands invocation of Article 13.”
“Don’t be a dick,” H said. “Who says farrago?”
“Yeah,” Em said, “don’t—” She snapped her gaze to H. “What’s Article 13?”
Cee drew back his jacket. On his belt he had a little holster for his neuralyzer. It reminded Em of the old professors at college who carried their cell phones on their hips, next to their slide rules. “Immediate termination and neuralyzation, in that order!” the senior agent declared, whipping the silver wand out of the holster and brandishing it.
“Again?” Em stared in astonishment at all the senior MiB agents around her. “That’s you people’s answer for everything!”
“Sir,” H said to High T, “you can’t.”
“Give me one good reason why not.” High T’s tone was grim.
Em saw the look on H’s face. The words struck him like a punch. The reality of what might come to be in the next few moments seemed to suddenly fall on the other agent. Em felt sorry for H, in spite of herself and the trouble he’d brought upon her. He’d lost Vungus, and now his best friend was ready to fire him and make him an outcast. H was at a loss for words, for once, so Em decided she needed to step in.
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